Can you compare the Irresistible hug and the Milagro hug please !!!!!!!!! I love Milagro so much
okay our best and brightest @scullysflannel already talked about this once but let's chat on it (+ unruhe because i watched it last night) just for you babes xxx
/ irresistible
irresistible is my favorite of the three, and my favorite scully trauma™ episode, as it's the most dedicated to the emotional progression.
this episode encapsulates an understanding that the x-files never shied from, that the scariest monsters are human men, it's pointless to pretend otherwise.
fresh off her abduction, a violation and loss of autonomy that she still doesn't understand, scully's reaction to the crimes of donnie pfaster is intimate: his victims are the dead, a group she's always been more connected with than most.
her grief and discomfort at the desecration of women that she's bearing witness to is so overwhelming, and it's something that she's alone in, as the men around her continue with business as usual.
as the investigation continues, scully decides to go back to washington, telling mulder that she'll "better drive this investigation" if she focuses on the evidence.
SCULLY: I'm not having trouble, Mulder.
MULDER: I'd understand, Scully. This isn't exactly easy to stomach.
SCULLY: I'm fine with it. Really. I just think we're a long way from catching this guy. If we could get a print, we'd have something to go on. Right now we're at a standstill.
MULDER: I think it's a good idea. I just don't want you to think you have to hide anything from me, Scully. I've seen agents with twenty years in the field fall apart on cases like this.
Scully: I'm fine, Mulder. I can handle it.
i love this scene. his response here is so perfect. apart from checking in and asking if she's okay a couple of times, he hasn't commented on her state of mind in this situation, but he knows she's having a hard time. he supports her decision to take a step back, playing along that it's a "good idea" for her to direct her attention to the tangible evidence, but encourages her to communicate how she's feeling.
and he tells her that to struggle with a case like this is understandable, it doesn't matter how much experience you have or your position, it's normal.
(another understanding that this show always had: to react emotionally to the brutality of the world and the exploitation of the vulnerable is human, it's the people who look at destruction unflinching who are wrong.)
back in D.C., scully sees her therapist. she tries, you guys. scully's "i'm fine" complex has never meant that she ignores a problem or shuts down, she tries to cope in a way that she's comfortable with. she removes herself from the scene. she goes where she'll be more useful. she schedules therapy.
MULDER: Are you staying on there, Scully?
SCULLY: No. I'm coming back tonight.
MULDER: Look, Scully. I know this is a pretty horrific case -
SCULLY: I'm okay with it, Mulder. Besides, you can use my help.
MULDER: Always.
after her session, scully decides to go back. she's okay with it. she's going to keep trying.
this is one of my favorite moments. she spends this entire episode putting on a front, he spends it meeting her exactly where she is; saying, "i see you," but only to comfort, not expose.
her "you can use my help," is one of their jokes. a way to say, "i'm okay, i'm ready," that's lighthearted and doesn't show too much. when he responds, "always," his voice has such a different tone. it's so earnest, and sweet. his response takes her very seriously, her contribution and state of mind and comfort.
she'd told her therapist, "i trust [my partner] as much as anyone. i trust him with my life...but i don't want him to know how much this is bothering me." he already knows.
(her smile on the phone, they are best friends)
i'm gonna borrow from the post linked up top for this next bit:
"Scully’s abduction is the major turning point in terms of how much the job affects her, and Irresistible is basically a replay of her abduction that gives her more control: she gets the catharsis of a fight, and she knows who she’s fighting (men)."
after being taken by pfaster, when she's found, she pulls out one more "i'm fine," but her suppression and image can't withstand confrontation. mulder gently lifts her chin, and the moment she meets his eye, she breaks down crying into his chest. she tries so hard, she has "always been the strong one," she did not want him to know that this was bothering her. but you can't survive it without facing it.
i didn't notice until today that her gag is still around her neck, she's still so ensnared. police are still making arrangements around them. it all just fades away though.
(he's whispering "it's alright," just for her to hear. when she moves her arms to hold onto him, pull him closer, his face breaks. he closes his eyes to keep from crying. he's so careful with her after her abduction, he's never had anyone come back before. this is a moment they're in together, a sort of catharsis after she returned. it's so foreign and painful to be needed, for the first time in so long.)
/ unruhe
unruhe, written by my beloved vince gilligan, is the most introspective that the x-files ever gets on the dichotomous reactions to gendered violence.
"She can hear him, still stomping around inside the trailer, no doubt looking through the pictures carefully, hoping for yet more insight into the depths of the now-dead serial killer’s mind.
In the back of her throat, burning acid threatens to force its way up.
The luxury of curiosity, she thinks."
-selbst
throughout unruhe, mulder is hyper-focused on gaining an understanding, attempting to find the killer (and at first, the abducted women) by looking into what has been left behind, and dismissing any other courses of action.
ultimately, nothing he does assists in the case at all, and it's scully's connections and discernments that locate schnauz, mulder and herself never on the same page. unlike irresistible's quiet contemplation and gentle understanding, they're consistently frustrated with each other.
(note that in this episode, scully is bound and held captive by a man obsessed with the loss of his sister. a dynamic that she is very aware of, as she asks schnauz, "why [do i need to be saved]? do i remind you of your sister?")
from the moment that schnauz's first victim resurfaces and they do the PET scan (something that only scully is able to read and understand, not mulder. something again rooted in her personal background), there is a shift in scully.
these women are being lobotomized, and they're being lobotomized incorrectly. schnauz is weaponizing medicine that he doesn't have proper knowledge of, and reducing these women into nothing. when mary lefante is found, she is unable to speak, except to repeat over and over the motivation of her captor ("unruhe," the german word for "unrest.")
things escalate when the body of the second victim is found, and in my favorite scene of the episode, mulder and scully quietly observe the remains in horror, before scully just walks off and gets back in the car (in the driver's seat, a rare occurrence).
MULDER: Hey, Scully, that word "unruhe", "unrest", is bothering me. Maybe he thought he was curing them somehow, saving them from damnation, from those things in the pictures, you know, he called them the "howlers."
SCULLY: It's over, Mulder.
MULDER: Well, then that photo wouldn't be his fantasy. It would be his nightmare.
SCULLY: What the hell does it matter?
MULDER: Because I want to know.
SCULLY: I don't.
(She starts the engine. Mulder stares at her for a second, then gets in the car.)
when mulder approaches the car to ramble about "unruhe," scully never looks over at him or makes eye contact. she doesn't wait for him to get in the car before putting on her seatbelt and starting it. it is over.
i've written about this before (in the previously linked post), but mulder always wants to believe that people who do evil things have a good reason, that they didn't really mean to. that they were just trying to help, or were just following a biological imperative. scully knows that it doesn't matter.
it's the ending of 2shy, when mulder is right, incanto is only killing women because he needs their fatty tissue to survive. and he looks at scully and says, "when you look at me, you see a monster, but i was just feeding the hunger." and scully answers, "you're more than a monster. you didn't just feed on their bodies, you fed on their minds."
what the hell does it matter?
ultimately, scully is forced to "empathize" with schnauz, to survive. she has to utilize the insights that mulder gleamed about him to forge a connection with him, and stall. (she is always listening, and she knows mulder is right. sometimes it just doesn't make things any better.)
as the situation progresses, when she hears mulder outside she's able to wrestle her arm out of its constraint and rip the tape off of her mouth. by the time mulder breaks in and shoots schnauz, she's all but freed herself.
mulder takes her hand and helps her up, and she bypasses him, walking out of the trailer into the light, with one last look back at schnauz. she leaves mulder with the body, as he's looking at the photos. (the luxury of curiosity.)
the only time that we see scully show emotion or vulnerability in this episode, is in the final frame. sitting alone in her apartment, she looks at the altered photos of herself, and her lip quivers as we cut to the ending credits.
where irresistible saw her actively trying to gain control, unruhe is more genuine. she's not trying to conceal anything, she's just tired, and she's alone.
/ milagro
ah, milagro. quintessentially season 6 in a way that i can never establish as positive or negative.
milagro is all about desire: a desire for attention, for approval, for relevance. it's only fitting that it should be so punishing.
ultimately, milagro is about voyeurism, and we have this represented through our monster-of-the-week: scully's stalker phillip padgett.
when scully meets padgett (who had recently moved into the apartment next to mulder) in a church, it's to observe the painting displayed there, "my divine heart."
as he reveals that he knew she would be there to see the painting, as well as many personal details that he has "noticed" about her, it's a heavily emotional discomfort to be so seen.
so much of this episode builds in padgett's apartment, just one door over from mulder. when scully knocks, she tells padgett she was on her way next door and just thought she'd stop and return the milagro charm that he'd given her (a symbol of a burning heart) because she "can't return the gesture."
we talked about this when we talked about small potatoes, but this episode is...embarrassing for her! the kind of attention that she craves is embarrassing to her.
when she comes into padgett's apartment, padgett remarks that it's because she's "curious." she notices things too.
SCULLY: Well, you lead a curious life.
PHILLIP PADGETT: It's not so different from yours I imagine-- lonely.
SCULLY: Loneliness is a choice.
loneliness is a choice, babes! the way that small potatoes ended in classification of mulder as a "loser by choice" (for all of the things he could have, and all of the things he chooses not to pursue), and scully absolving him of that criticism, milagro puts the agency of this mutual repression back onto scully.
(choice and agency is a very important reiterated theme in scully's character. this whole thing only works if she chooses to be here.)
and when mulder comes in to arrest padgett based on evidence found in the murder case, scully is in his bedroom by choice. (very very embarrassing for her)
like these tags said, "psychologist mulder taking two years to connect the dots scully laid out for him in never again."
god, this episode makes me so uncomfortable. it's also the only one of these three that i've never rewatched, so that's why i'm a little more lax in discussing it.
MULDER: No one can predict human behavior. No one can tell you what another person's going to do.
SCULLY: Well, isn't that what you do, Mulder, as a behavioral profiler? You … you imagine the killer's mind so well that you know what they're going to do next.
MULDER: If he imagines it, it's a priori-- before the fact. I think that's pretty clear from what he wrote about you.
laughs nervously...isn't that what you do!! don't you know people's minds and desires!!
when mulder tells scully that padgett's book ends with her having sex with the narrator, and asks, "i'm assuming that's a priori too?" it's so reminiscent of office desks and tattoo ink.
when she replies, "i think you know me better than that," they're both thinking of philadelphia, of something etched in her back that they've never put to words. that too, ended in fire, with desire punished.
(i'm always slack jawed at him asking her flat-out if she fucked the stalker. quintessential season 6, baby! eat your heart out!)
PHILLIP PADGETT: I made a mistake myself.
MULDER: What's that, Mr. Padgett?
PHILLIP PADGETT: In my book, I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love but that's obviously impossible. (looking at MULDER) Agent Scully is already in love.
agent scully is already in love, agent scully already desires so viscerally, (agent scully is making things personal, as mulder had rebutted in defense of diana, not long enough ago)
i know a lot of people love this line, but it just makes me want to weep for her. scully is such a discreet person, she values her privacy so much, and has so little of it left. it's the emotional equivalent of her physical exploitation, to have her most personal and intimate feelings exposed like this.
loneliness is a choice, and that’s her’s to make, the way mulder’s choice was affirmed in small potatoes.
(padgett as a character is a stand-in, he represents the voyeurism of an audience, of projecting a persona onto someone for personal gratification. he isn't ascribed any motive. but this to me, feels like a power trip, even if unintentional. he's perhaps just being honest, but he's recognizing that he can't have her body, so he exposes her soul. he also doesn't know scully as well as he thinks he does.)
both never again and milagro are about a caricaturized self, embracing or rebuking who you are in someone else's eyes. whether scully is perceiving herself as mulder's loyal first mate who "always does as told" or padgett's lonely object of lust, she responds by leaning into that exposure, going where she's wanted, and continuing her ascribed "cycle" of devotion and rebellion.
the reveal in the end, is that this week's monster is not truly padgett, but a character that he's created, who is committing the murders described in his book.
like padgett himself, the killer is a personification of longing; it's him who declares that the only way for the book to conclude, is for scully to die.
but just as jerse did in never again, padgett throws himself in the fire to narrowly absolve scully of the fated ending, and sacrifices his heart for hers.
when mulder realizes what's happening and races back up into his apartment, the sight is bone-chilling. she actually looks dead, unconscious and covered in blood, from a wound that's now healing.
when she wakes up and sees him over her, she reaches for him as abruptly as she opens her eyes. she claws into him, her fingers never stop grabbing at him, pulling him closer and closer and sobbing into his neck.
so little of it actually matters. she almost died without him there. this is after tithonus, and she's remembering those lessons again. (what about love? you don't want to be around when it's gone.)
and just as in irresistible, mulder breaks too, feeling the weight with her.
/
anon, to compare the three, i would say they each represent the theme of their particular place in the narrative and scully's characterization.
irresistible is the fragile dependence of a post-abduction season 2: perceiving comfort as a weakness, fear as a burden, but needing it anyway. recognizing who you trust, what that means, and that wounds can't heal in detachment. from each other and from the brutalization of the world itself.
unruhe is the building isolation of season 4: going where someone can’t follow, whether in societal experience or the looming instability that’s close ahead.
and milagro is the painfully confrontational tension of season 6. having your heart ripped out of your chest, bleeding, in attempts to be understood. just clutching what you need, weeping, in the end: there’s no use fighting it. (or hiding it. loneliness is a choice, but there’s freedom in being stripped of options)
it is a growth, in a diminishment of pretense and self-consciousness. it just comes at a cost.
i also want to bring it back to @scullysflannel’s post on this topic, because she summarized another aspect of it that i didn’t touch on:
“Scully tells the therapist in Irresistible that she doesn’t want Mulder to think he has to protect her, and I feel like the end of Milagro is about Scully accepting his type of protection, and by extension his type of love. Padgett makes her want Mulder to pursue her in a way he’s never done, but Padgett also ultimately shows her the danger of being sought after like that, and it makes Mulder’s straightforward protectiveness look pretty good. it doesn’t matter right then if Mulder is giving her everything she wants. she needs him.”
milagro is about desire, and ultimately it’s about a relinquishing of desire. scully is drawn to padgett because he offers her something that mulder doesn’t (won’t?) give her, and she’s ripped to pieces because of it.
it is punishing, to want something so badly. ultimately, when she almost loses it all, she’s clinging to what she has.
(but mulder is learning too, and they’ll get there. they’ll get to all of it.)
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All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Season Four Master Post
Season four is one of the most beloved seasons of The X-Files, and we had a lot of fun exploring the background characters that helped make it so special!
Check out this thread to see all the characters we got to meet this season!
Herrenvolk (4x01) | X
No one would remember him, and if they did, they would struggle to remember a name they were never told. The memory of his existence would remain occluded by the shadows he lived in.
Home (4x02) | Sheriff Andy Taylor
For protection, his father had said, as he pressed the unfamiliar cold metal into Taylor’s warm hand. To keep your family safe.
To keep your home safe.
He shuts the drawer. He isn’t ready for this reality, not now. Not yet.
Teliko (4x03) | Special Agent Sean Pendrell
With them, it was never something simple. It was a computer chip so fragile he could barely study it. It was a complex string of numbers and letters tracking a smallpox vaccination program for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom.
This was what he went to school for.
Unruhe (4x04) | Gerry Schnauz
Gerry knew she needed his help the moment they met. There was a howler inside of her head — a black mass invading her body and mind.
The Field Where I Died (4x05) | Melissa Rydell Ephesian
Melissa struggled with the idea of reincarnation, but dared not show it. And as it turned out, a broken link in the chain of her faith led to more broken links.
When she first saw Vernon hurt a child, the chain shattered.
Sanguinarium (4x06) | Dr. Theresa Shannon
The face on the computer had looked just like Jack, but that had to be impossible. The science of surgery hadn’t come that far. To spread the eyes further apart, change features completely… and besides, she knows him. Knows the person he is…
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (4x07) | Albert M. Godwinkle
All Albert M. Godwinkle wants today is to read a halfway decent manuscript that puts a smile on his disgruntled face. Today is not that day.
Tunguska (4x08) | Alex Krycek
If looks could kill, Alex would be a dead man. But he thrives off this, off making Mulder squirm. It’s just so fucking easy.
Terma (4x09) | Senator Albert Sorenson
He was a staunch proponent of holding insubordinate witnesses in contempt when the court was not being respected, and no one, not even a government employee, was immune to that.
Paper Hearts (4x10) | Addie Sparks
The little girl he loves is gone, and she is never coming back.
Just like me.
El Mundo Gira (4x11) | Migrant Worker
At the simple mention of El Chupacabra, the shack erupted in a cacophony of worry, as if merely saying the name might summon the beast.
Leonard Betts (4x12) | Michele Wilkes
Even through the panic she felt screaming through her that nothing about this was okay, she felt a moment of relief wash over her. Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe her partner hadn’t died while she was at the wheel.
Never Again (4x13) | Ed Jerse
Deadbeat. Loser. Failure.
He’s heard it all, and he has had enough. No one humiliates Ed Jerse anymore. No, not now. Never again.
Memento Mori (4x14) | Kurt Crawford
What is destined for a creature borne of fluid and test tubes, guided by the hands of cruel men?
Kaddish (4x15) | Ariel Luria
Someone else’s hatred had taken her true love away. Just like that, in an instant, like it was nothing. But it was not hatred that led her to the gravesite that stormy night.
Unrequited (4x16) | Special Agent Kent Hill
Hill slides in his earpiece, watching as their eyes lock. His wife would call it eavesdropping, but as he steps closer, tilting his head just right to better hear their hushed voices, Hill simply calls it satisfying a long-standing curiosity.
Tempus Fugit (4x17) | Bartender
The man tried to fluff the pink ball back into shape after presumably squashing it in his pocket. “The woman I came in with— it’s her birthday, and she loves these things. I was wondering if there was any way you could ask someone in the back to put it on a plate and bring it out to her?”
Max (4x18) | Sharon Graffia
Sharon Graffia isn’t a liar. She’d only done what she needed to in order for people to believe her. All she’s ever wanted was someone to believe her.
Synchrony (4x19) | Jason Nichols
Naïveté and a complete lack of understanding of the consequences of their work had been their downfall. But how could they have known?
Small Potatoes (4x20) | Eddie Van Blundht
It didn’t take him long to realize he’d initially misread the situation when he saw them at the clinic. Based on the look Dana Scully shot him when he tried to hold her hand at the airport, he knew he was navigating territory Fox Mulder had yet to conquer.
Zero Sum (4x21) | Billy
He slowly twisted his neck to the right, and was horrified by the sight before him. In the next bed over was David from his class, his face covered in gross red bumps. He looked dead.
Billy didn’t know what else to do. He started crying.
Elegy (4x22) | Lauren Heller
She had an exam in the morning. Her mother’s birthday was the following weekend. She had plans.
Demons (4x23) | Amy Cassandra
As she speaks, the deep wound in her skull throbs, reminding her that that was true, until weeks ago when she’d traded the nightmare of one penetrating drill with the reality of another.
Gesthemane (4x24) | Father McCue
Her faith had come from God, yes… but it had also come from another, less expected source. Perhaps it still did.
Stay tuned for more perspectives coming in Season Four!
1 | 2 | 3 | 4
We spend so much time deliberating and chatting about who to use in a given episode or where certain characters would be best utilized in the series, and we'd love to hear any opinions or predictions you might have! Do you have a favorite minor character? What episodes do you think would be best for our favorite recurring characters? Your feedback is one of the most enjoyable parts of this project (and sometimes hearing other perspectives can help inform the decisions we have to make). - @admiralty-xfd, @fridaysat9, @monikafilefan, and @gaycrouton
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